Islamic Reform: Holy Grail or Poisoned Chalice (Part II)

by Mary Jackson (May 2009)

 

Jihad Watch in January 2009, which links to a piece by John Stringer in St Francis Magazine:

never before has any Muslim scholar who lives in the Arab world, thrown so much doubt – publicly – on the sources of Islam.

Those that explain the Qur’an: the Qur’an can’t by explained by Hadiths.

Those that talk bad about women – like the one’s that call them equal to dogs and cows and to beat them up and so on.

Those that forbid the freedom of religion and that threaten those who leave Islam.

Those with extreme ideas for encouraging people into Islam and the ones threatening people wit physical violence.

 Those that talk about Muhammad’s miracles.

 Some others of which he thinks that the story is not true at all.

Egypt Today gives examples of the form his questioning takes:

First, what constitutes a “bad” Hadith? For Mr al-Banna, it seems to be a Hadith that does not accord with advanced Western thinking, for example one that equates women with dogs and cows. But how objective is Mr al-Banna, when he sets out to prove that such Hadith are inauthentic? Could his good intentions – and his enlightened Western values – influence his conclusions, or at least his selection of evidence? I have no answer to this, but I have a question: what if some of the “good” Hadith turn out to be inauthentic and the “bad” ones come straight from the Prophet’s mouth? Will the scholarship remain neutral when it tells us what we do not want to hear?

Secondly, Mr al-Banna does not challenge the Koran, only the Hadith. The Koran, for him, is the sacred, unchanging, perfect word of God, binding for all times. From the

 

If Mr al-Banna succeeds in taming the Hadith – and it is by no means certain that he will, or that his views will find favour – the Koran remains savage, and a rather ignoble savage at that. There are some injunctions to behave kindly, mainly to other Muslims, but what do you do with the “sword verse” (“slay the unbelievers wherever you find them”), or the reward for so doing, namely a large but unspecified number of houris (beautiful virgins) for the slayer (Koran 55, 56-7)?

Montecarlo, to the work of Christoph Luxenberg, which, it is claimed and hoped, does just that:

scholarly bookKoranBerlin2000.

IslamicIslamisticNewsweekarticlevirginpost-mortem sexual rewardsuicide-bombergrapes?

 

Journal of Syriac Studies. The praise, from Robert R. Phenix Jr and Cornelia B. Horn, is not unqualified:

Hugh Fitzgerald wrote:

 

So, if weak Hadith and white grapes will not reform Islam, what will? Part III will conclude my seemingly fruitless search.

 

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